Trains and travel of the Art Deco Era.

[Hexenmeister]

This article from Dark Roasted Blend popped up in my RSS feed this morning, featuring trains from the art deco era. They sure don't make 'em like this anymore. It's a shame, too, I ofter daydream of the romanticism of rail travel.

Trains And Railways Extravaganza, Part 2

 

[TM]

Very nice article. Thanks for posting it. Where did all that great train design go, anyway?

Tony

 

[Stearmen]

Trains and Cars

Love the paintings of the streamline trains racing the cars!

 

[St.Ignatz]

This article from Dark Roasted Blend popped up in my RSS feed this morning, featuring trains from the art deco era. They sure don't make 'em like this anymore. It's a shame, too, I ofter daydream of the romanticism of rail travel.

Buy a ticket. It's still a good time. The bar still travels with you.

 

[dhermann1]

Those images are fabulous. There were a lot of streamlined locos back in the 30's and 40's, but they were pretty much gone by the 50-'s. The problem was that tho they looked cool, the streamlining was of little yse aerodynamically, and madde it much harder to maintain the locos. You had to remove all that extra decoration before you could get at the mechanical parts that needed work. The Soithern Pacific had a great train that was a compromise of sorts, the GS-4 class of locomotives, that powered tha daytime Daylight train, and the night time Lark.
There's still one in operation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Pacific_4449
It's a truly gorgeous machine.

On the subject of train travel, in general, the great American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay said it better than I ever could:

Travel

The railroad track is miles away,
And the day is loud with voices speaking,
Yet there isn't a train goes by all day
But I hear its whistle shrieking.

All night there isn't a train goes by,
Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming,
But I see its cinders red on the sky,
And hear its engine steaming.

My heart is warm with the friends I make,
And better friends I'll not be knowing;
Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take,
No matter where it's going.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

 

[Stearmen]

The Soul Of A Train

While modern diesel electric engines fascinate me on a technical level, they just don't have a soul like a steam locomotive!

 

[FountainPenGirl]

The closest man has ever gotten to giving life to machinery is a steam engine.

Do yourself a favor. Find somewhere there is an operating steam engine whether locomotive, stationary power unit, traction engine, or what have you and visit it. You will not regret it. Until you get right up next to one and feel the warmth radiating off the boiler, See the steam escaping various components you really can't appreciate the awesomeness of it. A locomotive hooked up and waiting to depart seems to almost breathe in anticipation. Like an eager horse just waiting for the chance to show you what it can do. Well, if you haven't guessed I've been there and am fortunate to have traveled on steam trains. It's the best.

 

[Stearmen]

Steam Soul

The closest man has ever gotten to giving life to machinery is a steam engine.

Do yourself a favor. Find somewhere there is an operating steam engine whether locomotive, stationary power unit, traction engine, or what have you and visit it. You will not regret it. Until you get right up next to one and feel the warmth radiating off the boiler, See the steam escaping various components you really can't appreciate the awesomeness of it. A locomotive hooked up and waiting to depart seems to almost breathe in anticipation. Like an eager horse just waiting for the chance to show you what it can do. Well, if you haven't guessed I've been there and am fortunate to have traveled on steam trains. It's the best.

I'm not sure if you are addressing me? I thought I made my self clear when I said, "they just don't have a soul like a steam locomotive!" I have ridden on steam trains, living in colorado you have to ride the Durango & Silverton narrow gage. I was at the Eisenhower centennial, where chased down the Daylight with vintage WWII aircraft, then were trucked over to the station, where we stood at attention for the Veterans on the train, I could have reached out and touched the Daylight. I have of course been around Steam Farm equipment and Mining. I wish Jay Leno had not driven the price of stem cars out of sight, would love to own one! Also dabbled in model steam! Like I said, steam has soul!

 

[Diamondback]

Actually, NYC found a way: the Dreyfuss streamliners combined ease of maintenance (very little difference from an unstreamlined J3a, mainly in the back-half under the cab) with better drag. SP, the GS-4's conical nose isn't an addon but an integral part of the smokebox design IIRC.

Oh, BTW, unless you count the shark-nosed postwar T-1's, confining it to strictly prewar steam NYC had much more than PRR, but not as much as SP. (PRR would only use streamliners in daylight hours, first Division Point after sunset the Broadway was handed off to unstreamlined engines to get over the mountains then GG1 electrics for the east end--NYC's Century you had the bricklike T-motor all the way to Harmon, but from there when possible it was streamlined J3a's, a fresh engine at each point possible, all the way to LaSalle Street in Chicago.)

 

[Atomic Age]

Very nice article. Thanks for posting it. Where did all that great train design go, anyway?

Tony

They went away when it became a government operation.

Doug

 

[Diamondback]

Before, actually: it started to die in the mid-fifties with the gradual decline of the observation/tailcar.

 

[St.Ignatz]

They went away when it became a government operation.

Doug

Not so A A. Lets look at the PRR Aerotrain, yuk. Wasn't the government regs alone that killed beauty the airplane, interstate highway system and economics all played a part. Government take over (Conrail) saved the freight lines and NRPC rescued what they could of the psgr system. The mighty GG1 had to be phased out not only because it was 50+ years old but used a different phase and voltage along with PCB laden pyrinol. The sight of the torches cutting up the G's at Edgemoor Del. was a nightmare.
Tom D.

 

[Diamondback]

Well, at an age when normal kids are interested only in getting into their prom dates' skirts, I was undertaking a study of what caused the downfall of private passenger rail (and railroading in general), and there was no fatal bullet--more like a firing squad with belt-feds--but the closest was the policy of raising taxes on railroads to subsidize the competition (air, Interstates, St. Lawrence Seaway).

BTW, Aerotrain wasn't just PRR--both trains were GM-owned, just did test tours on several RR's including NYC, PRR and UP (where it was the "City of Las Vegas"). The ride downright sucked, and they ran their last years in Rock Island commuter-service.

Suggest anyone interested in Aerotrain and its competing ultralight-train concepts check out Geoff Doughty's New York Central and the Trains of the Future--which also discusses the ACF Talgo's, NH's Roger Williams super-RDC, the PRR Keystone, the Turbotrains and the abortive NYC/NH "Train X". Yeah, I know you PRR fans will have the same problem with the NYC brandname as I do with yours, but I think you'll find it worth "biting the bullet" for.

 

[Fletch]

No railbuff here - I just enjoy riding them - but I quite enjoyed the PBS double-whammy of Murder on the Orient Express with David Suchet as Poirot, followed by the documentary of Suchet as himself actually riding that train as it is today. He did get to interview the train manager and drive the locomotive awhile thru Austria, but otherwise, no special privileges.

My graphic design prof here at Iowa State is a serious railbuff, and he confirms what dhermann said earlier - that the design of the streamliner locomotives was mostly cladding. The inner workings of the steam loco remained essentially the same, or maybe a little more complicated.

 

[St.Ignatz]

Well, at an age when normal kids are interested only in getting into their prom dates' skirts, I was undertaking a study of what caused the downfall of private passenger rail (and railroading in general), and there was no fatal bullet--more like a firing squad with belt-feds--but the closest was the policy of raising taxes on railroads to subsidize the competition (air, Interstates, St. Lawrence Seaway).

Agreed DB that subsidizing the competition was a large nail in the coffin as were the regs for crew size and demand for service in losing markets. Freight pays for the track upkeep. Separate the frt from psgr and we know who looses. We still subsidize Air in so many hidden ways. ATC, air marshalls, airports etc. Like sin taxes, what do you do when people stop sinning and the golden goose is dead? We move more tonnage with fewer people than ever on the frt roads unless you look at the wars years. Conrail was able to go private and get gobble up by CSXT and NS because they were made very efficient, something many folks hate to see from a "government" organization.
Tom D.

 

[HepKitty]

beautiful stuff, my dad will be here next week and I'll have him check this out. he doesn't have a pc otherwise I'd send him the links thank you for sharing this!

 

[lord_k]

Rexall Train

The story of the Million Dollar streamline train - actually a moving druggists convention - is missing from The Dark Roasted Blend article.

It's unusual even by 1930s standards. Learn more...

 

[Diamondback]

And that "shovelnose" came off as soon as the tour was done.

 

[lord_k]

And that "shovelnose" came off as soon as the tour was done.

Precisely! And the loco, so much resembling the NYC flagship Commodore Vanderbilt, was very, very old. If my Alzheimer is still trustworthy, it was built in 1908.

 

[Diamondback]

IIRC, NYC's first 4-8-2's, of which the engine used was one, weren't built until the 1910s or '20s.

Once I can find it or order another copy, I'll have to recheck Steam Locomotives of the New York Central Lines, the two volumes of which were the last of the final NYCS Chief Mechanical Engineer's career as a prolific railroad author. (IIRC, Volume 2 was published postmortem.)